Explaining the System Landscape Directory (SLD)

SAP has developed a central directory for storing application component information and system landscape data.

Software component information includes information about all the available SAP software modules; for example, products, software components, releases, Support Packages, and so on. It also includes the possible combinations of software modules along with their dependencies; for example, Operating System versions, databases, and so on.

SAP provides component information that you can update as required by downloading the relevant files from SAP Support Portal at http://support.sap.com. You can also enter components from external providers in your SLD.

For example, SAP BASIS is a software component; SAP BASIS 7.00 is a software component version. It is registered in the component information as a CIM instance of the class SAP_SoftwareComponent. This entry contains important information about the component; for example, date of implementation, date when support ends, and so on). In addition, all existing Support Packages are registered for the component and associated with the component.

The System Landscape Directory (SLD) describes the individual system landscape, for example, network addresses, links, and so on, that is installed at your site. Together with the component information, the description of the components that are actually installed provides reliable and up-to-date data for the system management applications.

A data supplier, which is configured in the relevant system, is available for SAP systems and SAP NetWeaver AS. Data suppliers provide the SLD with up-to-date system data at regular intervals.

For example, an application system runs on an SAP NetWeaver Application Server 7.4. This installed software component has an entry in the system landscape description as an instance of the CIM class SAP_InstalledSoftwareComponent.

Using a relationship of the type SAP_SoftwareComponentType, the instance establishes a connection to the counterpart in component information, namely, instance for the CIM class SAP_SoftwareComponent. In this way, the instance has access to all the relevant information from the component information.

The SLD server is used as the name server for the SAP Java development infrastructure. The name server guarantees that local and global names of development objects are unique. You can run the name server together with the SLD server in one software instance. Alternatively, you can run both servers separately on different Hardware servers.

In addition to information about products and software components, you can also enter technical and business systems in the SLD. There are various types of technical systems. The type of technical system determines the attributes you must enter. From the SLD initial screen, follow the Technical Systems link to access the definition of the technical systems. The system navigates to a screen where you can select a system type. The system then displays a list of technical systems for the selected system type.

You want to map business processes in a distributed system landscape and you want the mapping to be independent of changes to the physical servers of the systems involved. For this reason, you assign a business system name to the technical systems in the SLD. The business system describes the semantics of a system or a client in an SAP system.

To implement the business processes, you must know which software components are available in which business systems. A business system must be assigned to each technical system at configuration time at the latest.

When you implement a business process in a distributed system landscape, you determine the business system in which the particular process step runs and which software component executes the process steps. If the business system changes between two consecutive process steps, the sender software component must provide all the data. This data is required for the subsequent process step with an outbound interface.

This data is sent to the receiver business system, where it is processed using an inbound interface. Therefore, each time data is transferred between two systems, you must identify the sender outbound interface and the receiver inbound interface. If SAP Process Integration is used to integrate the systems, the document is converted from the format in which it is sent into an SAP PI XI-Message Protocol, an XML based message format. Within SAP Process Integration, the document structure is mapped to the structure of the inbound interface (structure and value mapping) and is converted to the format of the target system.

To define and display the business systems in the SLD, choose the Business systems link on the initial screen of the SLD, and choose New Business System or select an entry in the list of existing business systems. Note that you can also apply filters to retrieve a limited list of defined business systems.